Help! On my desktop PC the monitor appears to have stopped working. It happened once the other day on boot up but went away when I rebooted, then yesterday I couldn't get it to work at all until the afternoon.

The symptom is that the screen has an error message like "No signal input. Check cable".

I don't think it is the monitor itself, as I have tried a separate cable and montior from another PC and get the same thing. After I had tried the oter monitor, I replugged in the original monitor and cable and it suddenly worked!

So... is the video bit of my motherboard f*cked, or is there some other likely cause that I can check?

If it is f*cked, can I get a separate video card and use that instead? I do have a spare card slot, but would it have to be a special type of slot?

TIA

Simon

ETA Just looked on PC World website and it appears they are called Graphics Cards , but I would rather pay £39.99 than over £400 (mght as well buy a new PC for that!). Some of them say they need a PCI Express motherboard with a spare PCI Express x16 slot - how would I check if I have a PCI Express mboard?

[Edited on 09.08.2010 by Humbug]

You should see a slot on the motherboard. google it and youll see some pictures to give you an idea.

I have spare graphics cards if it comes to it, but youll need to know which type and if youre system will support.

I take it youre using on board graphics (Motherboard) at the moment?

If you plug in a graphics card it will override the on board graphics and solve the problem.

The PCI is the standard slot, there was another one iirc for graphics cards only but I can't remember the name off hand..

Remember though you get what you pay for, the £30 one is probably fine for 85% of what you could do, while a £400 is no doubt in excess of what you comp is capable of

I had a similar problem, I removed all the leads and all boards and ram from mother board put it back together and it has worked fine for the last two years. Must have been a bad connection.

Now you are going to laugh.

Remove graphics card
Remove fan and all plastics from it
place in oven on a baking tray on gas mark 5 for 10 mins
allow 15 mins to cool then rebuild.

Should do the trick, i have done this on 2 graphics cards now and they are still working to this day.
i beleive it is caused by dry solder so doing the above should cure it.

Good luck and enjoy

Thanks for the replies. Loks like it might potentially be more serious than graphics card, as I could not see a shared folder on the PC from another networked lappy, so seems like the PC is not actually booting, only the power and fan is coming on.

What does it mean on startup when you get a constant beeping: 3 seconds on, 3 seconds off?

Just disconnected power, hoovered out the dust, disconnected hard disk power and data cables and reset, then reconnected power and hey presto, it boots up! Not sure how long it will last, but anyway...

Thanks again for the replies. I'll be back if I get more probs!

Simon

You could try the monitor on another pc to be sure.

For bleep codes - they tend to be specific to the motherboard. have a look at the motherboard to find out what it is then google for the manual for it.

Could be lots of things, including the thermal paste on the CPU drying out....

If you're lucky it's a problem with the memory. Try removing the DIMM blowing out the dust and crap and then replace.

But look up the bleep code on the internet to be sure.